I read this because I am seeing it performed in June. Hopefully, I like it better then since from listening to it on audiobook then it is only okay. ( )

One of Shakespeare's most difficult plays, in that it is rife with archaic language and is virtually plotless, Love's Labour's Lost nonetheless is the work of a master of poetic language. H.B. Charlton analyzes the play and breaks down its arcane and obsolete vocabulary in a way that makes the play easily understood and read by anyone willing to put thought and time into it. It is, for me, one of Shakespeare's lesser comedies, but a worthwhile one for anyone wishing to know and understand the world's greatest writer. ( )

Not the bard's best, but the language is magnificent - almost too much in places - and the jabs and jests are funny, sharp, at times hilarious. Presumably an early work and considered mere wordplay by some, you still find in it the philosophical and humane Shakespeare we’re familiar with. ( )

[Love's Labour's Lost - The Arden Shakespeare]
Love's Labour's Lost - BBC Shakespeare Collection 1985
Shakespeare does it again, he writes a play that builds and deepens on much of what has gone before (1594/5) on the British stage, producing a play that seems totally original. Between August 1592 and the spring of 1594 the London theatres were closed due to the plague and Shakespeare's career as a playwright seems to have come to a halt as he probably spent his time preparing his narrative poems Venus and Adonis (1593) and The Rape of Lucrece (1594). Certainly he must have been busy writing sonnets, because a few of them appear in Love's Labour's Lost. There is a lot of poetry in the play and a good percentage of it is rhymed iambic pentameters. It is a delight to read and the only comparison I can make is with the later plays of John Lyly for example Loves Metamorphoses where the themes are virginity, chastity and constancy in love, all wrapped up in a froth of light entertainment. Love's Labour's Lost is certainly a comedy and would fall under the genre of light entertainment, but there is more depth, more word play and the jokes are more funny.

There is not much of a plot in Love's labour's Lost. Ferdinand the King of Navarre has persuaded three of his courtiers Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine to give up all pleasures for a three year period to study with him in his academy. They have forsworn oaths that they will not even speak to any women during this time. Berowne points out that the king must break his oath the next week because he has agreed to welcome the Princess of France and her attendants who are arriving on a diplomatic mission. The inevitable happens the four men fall in love with the Princess and her ladies Rosaline, Maria and Katherine and must devise ways of courting their intended. A Spanish gentleman, a clown are both looking to get their way with Jaquenetta a dairymaid and a pedantic schoolmaster Holofernes are all thrown into the mix. There are the usual elements of disguises, mistaken identity, a play within a play and many opportunities for double entendres, however Shakespeare introduces two major items of originality in that the women always seem to have the upper hand and are wise and worldly compared to their male counterparts and the ending of the play is open ended.

The four men appear foolish from the very start with their oath making and only proceed to become more foolish when they fall in love. The play does not rely on mistaken identities or slapstick comedy to entertain, but does rely on wordplay, wit and characterisation. This can make it more difficult to catch all the jokes and puns, because of the differences in language and culture between modern times and the Elizabethan era, but I think there is still enough which comes through to entertain us today, which was shown by the BBC production: the penultimate scene of the play put on by the nine worthies (commoners) was hilarious. As in much of Shakespeare more familiarity with Elizabethan culture and drama will result in a more in depth all round entertainment. A feature of this play is the craze for sonnet writing. Shakespeares contemporaries were rushing into print with sonnet collections based on ideas from a previous era of courtly love where the poet would write reams of words complaining about his unrequited love, for the unattainable woman or man of his affections. Ferdinand, Berowne, Longaville and Dumaine all write sonnets to their loved ones and those proudly read out by Ferdinand, Longaville and Dumaine are certainly no better than much of the dross that was served up by the Elizabethan sonneteers. The sonnet written by Berowne is a cut above the others, but unfortunately this one gets misplaced and read out by Nathaniel the curate to Jaquenetta the dairymaid, when it finally gets back to Berowne he immediately tears it up; this is surely Shakespeare's joke. There are many jokes concerning book worms and ink horns, which stretch across the social divide from the nobles to the professionals. Unrequited love is a feature of most sonnet collections and at the end of this play love is unrequited for all of the sonnet writers.

A play then about the battle of the sexes, with the women as the morally superior beings, but of course it is the foolish men who are the stars of the show. Much can be read into the play; for example Shakespeare's comments on the life of the courtiers, the tomfoolery and ignorance of the working classes, but although this may be interesting from a historical point of view this is an entertainment first and foremost. The reader can appreciate the word play with the puns and the innuendos, but the BBC production of the play showed how it works on stage. It is a delight for the eye as well as the brain and can be adapted to enhance Shakespeare's original stage craft. I was pleased to see that not too much was made of the sexual innuendos by the actors and if the viewer reads anything in the dialogue then this was not the result of leery comments or facial expressions from the players. This play does not need that, it has Shakespeare's genius to lift a mundane plot full of clichés into superb entertainment. A four star read and a five star view. ( )

اونقدر برام دلنشین نبود... البته مترجم خودش اذعان کرده بود که کمدی‌ها باید به زبان اصلی خونده بشه و ترجمه از لطفشون کم می‌کنه... نکته‌ی جالب برای من انتهای نمایشنامه بود که به نوعی می‌شه گفت تمهیدی پست مدرن به کار گرفته می‌شه و یک نوع فاصله‌گذاری برشتی و یا مرگ مؤلف پساساختاری توش شکل می‌گیره و یکی از شخصیت‌ها به اسم برون از بلند بودن نمایش شکایت می‌کنه! به هر حال همین فرم‌ها و پیشرو بودن شکسپیر هست که اون رو موندگار کرده! ( )

Rescued from MHSL weeding project in 1986. Green cover has a tree on cover - part of a classroom set.

A play replete with puns and double-entendres, this is one of Shakespeare's earliest and most lighthearted.

The young king of Navarre and three of his courtiers have vowed to lock themselves away for three years of study and fasting, and to forswear the company of women for this period. No sooner is their vow made than it is tested, however, as the princess of France and three of her ladies arrive in Navarre on a diplomatic mission. The young men fall instantly and hopelessly in love, and the tension between their vow and their passion forms the subject of this charming and sparkling early comedy. ( )

"Where all those pleasures live that art would comprehend..." (pg. 43)

In what might be Shakespeare's breeziest play, the King of Navarre and three of his lords swear off women in order to pursue a study of philosophy, only to fall head over heels for the first women they come across – the Princess of France and three of her ladies. Hilarity ensues.

Or at least, hilarity would ensue for a Tudor audience, familiar with the now-archaic wordplay and frivolity. To a modern audience, the disguises and mistaken-identity tomfoolery have been done better elsewhere, and the characters don't sustain our interest (though Berowne comes close). The wordplay is a bit too incessant and excitable to be truly enjoyable.

Better Shakespeare comedies provide a theme to chew on, for all their nonsense, but the closest Love's Labour's Lost gets to this is a lampooning of romantic love. There are some deliberately syrupy pastiches of ardent love, and when Berowne says of one of his love letters that "the clown bore it, the fool sent it, and the lady hath it" (pg. 46), he could just as easily be talking of a lovestruck man who is himself both clown and fool, than the literal clown and fool characters of the play. But such whispers of the Shakespeare we admire are few – though they are there – and for the most part Love's Labour's Lost is plain and unremarkable comedy. ( )

Eh, not a big fan of The Bard's comedies. The bulk of them come across as a Three's Company episode with better dialogue.

Love's Labour's Lost is a particularly confused mess. The men declare themselves uninterested in women, then lose their minds over the first women they see, many of whom they admit are not that attractive. The women are keen to meet the men, then rebuff and humiliate them at every turn, then agree to accept their attentions after a suitable period of mourning/penance has passed. The whole situation is patently a platform on which to stage battles of wits, and those neither scintillating nor scathing.

This is compounded by the puerile interpretations of the Norton editor, one Walter Cohen, who insists that the play is a homoerotic and scatological triumph. Every occurrence of the word "loose" or "end" has a chuckling gloss denoting "ass" or "anus" or "scatological". When "enigma" is misconstrued by a character to be "an egma", it is insisted that "egma" is "enema", and that "salve" is "an anal salvo discharged from the male". Within three lines, the word "goose" is assumed to refer to "prostitute", "a victim of veneral disease", and "buttocks". And all that is just one page from scene 3.1. It gets a bit tiresome. ( )

I enjoyed the absurd interactions between Holofernes and Nathaniel, and the whole play was a good bit of light-hearted fun. But I couldn't help but feel that even Shakespeare went a bit too far with the ostentatious verbiage on this occasion. ( )

Not so profound a play as Twelfth Night, but an entertainment which has stuck with me over the decades. To the modern eye this is obviously a satire upon manners of the time, and it is more accessible to the modern reader than many of the other plays from the same hand. A king decides to absent himself from duties and cultivate his mind. His male courtiers perforce fall in with the scheme. but the ladies are annoyed to be deprived of male company, and break into the plan, with predictable by-play. Biron and Rosaline find each other, and even the king finds himself compromised. He shortens the period he will be cloistered and everyone promises to meet again in a year, to see how their affections have held. And, we all go home, wondering which couples will stand the strain. ( )

Had a pause of a few days before reading the last scene, so really these four stars are for the last scene. Otherwise, it seemed pretty much like a proto-Merry Wives. Boyet really came through in the end, as did Berowne. ( )

Usually I’m a big fan of Shakespeare’s comedies, but this play is so strange and underwhelming that I just can’t quite get on board with it. The premise is simple - 3 scholars plus a king make a vow to devote themselves to study and forswear any indulgences including the company of women, so of course along comes three ladies and a princess hoping to form a marriage alliance. The play isn’t particularly well-developed in my opinion (all the characters are pretty interchangeable and their tomfoolery is much simpler than in other plays), but that makes a certain amount of sense considering that it is one of his earlier efforts in the genre. Shakespeare utilizes similar techniques to explore male and female relationships in later plays (using masks, heightening the vocal sparring, and going as far as swapping genders) to much greater effect, but here we can see the simple beginnings of a playwright flexing his pen & ink. ( )

36. Love's Labor's Lost by William Shakespeare
editors John Arthos & series editor Sylvan Barnett
Essays afterward Walter Pater, Northrop Frye (“The Argument of Comedy”), Richard David, Robert Shore
originally performed: c1595
format: 176-page Signet Classic paperback
acquired: May
read: May 31 – July 3
time reading: 11 hr 32 min, 3.9 min/page
rating: 5
locations: Navarre, Spain
about the author April 23, 1564 – April 23, 1616

On a lighter note, a Shakespeare play on Love's Warriors flinging and deflecting sonnets, with calls to arms. As one character puts it, "Assist me some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet.” Beware.

The premise is the King of Navarre (not Henry, but a reference to the then current French King) takes three friends and founds an ascetic community dedicated entirely to knowledge. No women are allowed in to distract. Alas, a princess visits on business, attended conveniently by three ladies. Four love matches spontaneously develop and the ascetic rules the king set up get deeply tried.

Love's Labour's Lost has some stage trouble because of the difficulty of the language. But it works wonderfully on the page and probably also on the stage when done well. Essentially there are three short clever but lingually difficult acts, then an Act 4 of ridiculous love sonnets, four long ones. But these sonnets are surficial and their silliness is the point. The last act, Shakespeare's longest, drops everything, plot and language, down to an easier level, includes an entire play within a play who purpose is to mock to actors. It offers a conclusion that roughly, and appropriately, shows all was for naught, hence the title. Thoroughly enjoyable and recommended with a touch of caution. Not everyone in the group I read with liked it.

2020
https://www.librarything.com/topic/318836#7219080 ( )

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Love's Labour's Lost
Series: ----------
Author: William Shakespeare
Rating: 2 of 5 Stars
Genre: Play, Comedy
Pages: 98
Format: Digital Edition

Synopsis:

King Ferdinand, 3 of his lords and a Spaniard, all take a vow to study, fast and avoid women for 3 years. Of course, King Ferdinand forgets that he's supposed to be welcoming a French Princess into his court. She and her ladies arrive, are forced to decamp outside of the city and all the men fall instantly in love with the ladies.

They write love letters, lie to each other, all catch each other out, unsuccessfully woo the ladies as Russians (I kid you not) and then, just when they are about to successfully win the ladies as themselves, the Princess's father dies and the ladies all retire for a year.

Throw in some mouthy servants and smart ass pages and bob's your uncle.

My Thoughts:

A lot of the humor of this play was based on the reparte between the men amongst themselves, the ladies amongst themselves and then amongst them all as a group. They cut, they swipe, they're snide and pompous. It didn't work for me at all.

The servants should have been whipped to death for their insolence or at least muzzled. The men were idiots for taking such an oath in the first place and then to watch them each perjure themselves was just disgraceful. The women were cold and playing it all as a game when they should have been much more serious.

All in all, if a dragon had walked on stage and eaten every character, I would have stood up, cheered my head off and then run off as fast as I could before the dragon ate me. I am beginning to suspect that I don't like Shakespeare's style or sense of humor.

★★☆☆☆ ( )

This is an early play, so Shakespeare's chops are just emerging. Some elements are confusing (FOUR couples courting, FOUR mixed-missives! Really?) But this is a hilarious rumination on the value of an academic life versus falling in love and...well, we all know the rest... ( )

Definitely, definitely now one of my most favourite of Shakespeare's. Absolutely hilarious and very clever, an absolute joy to study in class, and one of those plays where a lot of the jokes are still funny to a modern audience (as compared with Much Ado, where a lot of the wordplays and references Elizabethans thought were a riot just aren't so amusing to us now). ( )

A king and his gentlemen vow to remain celibate, studious and moderate in their habits for three years to improve their minds. They have signed their names to this vow. Oops! They forgot that an embassy from France was due soon, consisting of a princess and her ladies! Shenanigans ensue. And wordplay, such wordplay!

What seemed at first a fairly shallow and cynical plot, developed by the end to be a story of depth. No fools these women, they understood these men better than the men understood themselves, and called them on their foolishness. Shakespeare leaves the ending undecided, as the twelve month penance the men are given by the women is "too long for a play." ( )

The 2000 film of this play got me in trouble because I was laughing so loudly at Shakespeare; I was told after the film, "Everybody in this room HATES you." (Guess Americans are not s'posed to laugh at Great Drama--or poetry, either.)
Arguably Shakespeare's most Shakespearean play, or interplay: the exchanges of wit, what he would have overheard at Middle Temple and among his fellow actors. Rather than the text, I'll comment on Branagh's musical version, with himself as Berowne and Director, Scorsese as producer. It's hilarious, especially for a Shakespearean; I laughed throughout so much (my laugh scares babies) one lady in the audience 25 came up to me after the film to kindly inform, "Everybody in this room HATES you." I thanked her for the admonition.
Very slow, stagey opening lines by the Prince. Dunno why. They cut the poetry criticism, and substitute the American songbook--Gershwin, Berlin--for poems. The Don Armado stuff (with Moth his sidekick) is broad, not literary: mustachioed, funny body, melancholy humor. Armado's the most overwritten love-letter, parodying catechism; but he is standard Plautine Braggart Soldier ("Miles Gloriosus") by way of commedia dell'arte. Then the Plautine Pedant (commedia Dottore) Holofernia crosses gender, a female professor type. Costard wears a suit, maybe a Catskills standup.
Branagh cuts the Russian (or fake-Russian) lingo, "muoosa-Cargo" of the masked entrance.
Wonderful 30's film cliches: female swimmers, the dance scenes, the prop plane's night takeoff. Ends with WWII, grainy newsreel footage of the year, after news of the French Princess's father's death.
Berowne (pronounced .."oon") is sentenced privately "to move wild laughter in the throat of death…" His judge, Rosaline, points out the Bard' instruction on jokes: "A jest's prosperity lies in the ear / Of him that hears it, never in the tongue / Of him that makes it" (V.end). LLL ends with death and winter (the Russian an intimation?): "When icicles hang by the wall,/ And Dick the shepherd blows his nail,/ And Tom bears logs into the hall,/ And milk comes frozen home in pails.." and the owl talks, "Tu-whit..Tu whoo, a merry note/ While greasy Joan doth keel the pot." That's the European Tawny Owl (male and female must combine for it) so an American director might replace with the same prosody, "Who cooks for youuu?"(the Barred Owl).
In the penultimate scene, Dull is onstage the whole scene nere speaking a word until Holofernes says, "Thou hast spoken no word the while," to which Dull, "Nor understood none neither, sir."
Well, no wonder, if he has no Latin, for Costard offers, "Go to, thou has it AD dunghill…as they say." Hol, "Oh, I smell false Latin--dunghill for UNGUEM." The Bard kindly explains the Latin joke, essential for modern American readers.
Incidentally, Berowne uses Moliere-like rhymed couplets in his social satire on Boyet, V.ii.315ff. His most daring rhymes, "sing/ushering" and maybe "debt/Boyet." ( )

This had some great wit as is usual for Shakespeare, but it being (likely) his first comedy, it doesn't have the complexity of plot and broadness of language that most of his later comedies have.
( )

This had some great wit as is usual for Shakespeare, but it being (likely) his first comedy, it doesn't have the complexity of plot and broadness of language that most of his later comedies have.
( )

In one of Shakespeare's earliest plays the King of Navarre and the Princess of France and their attendants meet, and the various couples fall in love over jesting and witty repartee. As the title suggests, however, love does not win in the end as the ladies return to France due to a tragedy and insist that the gentlemen wait a year before continuing to court them.

I've never seen this one done (either live on stage or as a movie), so it was harder for me to follow than the Shakespeare plays that I've seen before reading. It did have its good moments, and there were several themes that Shakespeare began to explore here before fully developing them in later works. One major complaint that I do have is that there were just too many characters for me to keep them all straight. ( )

Love's Labour's Lost is one of Shakespeare's comedies, despite its unique ending in which none of the lovers are conveniently married off, and the men are instead ordered to a year's worth of abstinence to prove their devotion to the women. The ending echoes the opening of the play in a bitterly amusing way: at the start of the play, the men have sworn off women and dissolute living for three years, to improve their minds, and at the end of the play they swear to be faithful for a year and a day (in other words, no women) to prove the constancy of their loves. Will they abide by the second promise, when they were unable to keep the first? The doubt surrounding this proposition closes the play on a jarring note.

I started with the ending, so let me retrace my steps and explain the premise From the beginning. The King of Navarre and this three companions have taken an oath to perform three years of study and fasting, abstaining from women to keep their minds clear. One of the men, Berowne, skeptically observes that none of them has the endurance, but he reluctantly agrees. Enter the women: the Princess from France arrives for some political parley, along with her three women companions. The men immediately fall in love; fortunately, each man falls in love with a separate lady in the group. Without any hesitation, they throw aside their oath. In a scene that is replete with wonderful dramatic irony, each man comes out, one at a time, to confess in a soliloquy that he will pursue his new love, while at least one other man is hiding in the wings, eavesdropping. The King overhears the confessions of the others, and rebukes them for breaking their oath, before Berowne points out that he heard the King himself betray their earlier promise, and so they all have a good laugh at each other. They decide to court the ladies in disguise. Boyet, one of the men attending the Princess, overhears their plans and tells the female visitors. Not only are they a little indignant at this turn of events - the King had earlier refused them admittance into the Court, due to his oath, forcing them to camp outside - they are also contemptuous of how easily the men break their promises and of the foolish way they hope to woo them. To repay them for these issues, the women devise their own plot. They will also wear disguises, professing to be someone else, and force the men to court the wrong woman.

As Shakespeare's women are so often the more clever gender, the plan goes exactly the way the women wish it to. The King and his entourage humbly apologize, and after some playful bickering, all turns out well, for it seems that the women have also fallen in love, each with the man that is most partial to her. This type of miraculous coincidence is to be expected in a comedy, where even fate and destiny work for the eventual good of the characters. Indeed, the story seems headed to the conventional ending marriage and celebration, when the festive events are interrupted with somber news. The Princess's father has died, and she must return home to mourn for the required year. The ladies extract promises from the men to show their love by being faithful to them during their year of absence, and the play ends with the characters parting, with promises to reunite which may or may not be kept.

This play is great fun, despite a plot that has remarkably little happen beside bantering and mockery. Indeed, find a version that has copious notes (this version has one page Shakespeare text and a facing page of explanatory notes), because the wordplay in this drama is abundant. Love's Labour's Lost is considered Shakespeare's most inventive play in terms of language and original plot. The disguises and misdirection underscore the hollowness of the dramatic oaths, undertaken so quickly, abandoned so easily. The text is bursting with jokes, double entendres, play on words, and naughtiness, although it is difficult to unpack. If you can unearth the difficult and now dated language (which is why some reference material is handy), you will be chuckling throughout, even during scenes where the laughter makes you feel a bit guilty, like when the nobles heartlessly ridicule the terrible pageant put on for them by the secondary lower class characters. The royal lovers may be more intelligent, but the buffoonish characters like Don Armado and Moth have far more heart than their supposedly noble betters. That is a good reflection of this play, actually: a dark and hard quality often cuts into the frothy frivolity of the humor, with a bitterness that is at odds with the avowed good nature of the players. Dichotomy makes for a fascinating read, and pair that with writing that lavishly embraces language and its possibilities, and you have one of Shakespeare's more unusual and compelling comedies. I am partial to the comedies, and this one is at the top of my list. ( )

After seeing the fantastic Shakespeare in the Park original musical adaptation, I decided to read the play itself. The Shakespeare in the Park version interspersed modern lyrics with the original lines in a way that complemented both--and told a psychologically modern story that was set among recent college graduates getting back together again--and falling in love, interspersed with some of the more over-the-top satiric characters. It was hard to believe that the play itself could read anything like that adaptation. But, of course, it did.

Love's Labor's Lost is about a King and his followers that take a vow to retreat from women to study for three years, a princess and her followers who come upon them and disrupt the vow, and what happens after. The romantic comedy between Berowne and Rosaline drives much of the plot and is up there with the best of Shakespeare's witty, romantic repartee. ( )

I was surprised to say I quite liked William Shakespeare's "Love's Labors Lost." Knowing that it isn't often performed today (and that my local library didn't even have a copy of this one,) I really didn't have high expectations. I found it an entertaining, though sometimes challenging read.

"Love's Labors Lost" is essentially a romantic comedy. The King of Navarre and his courtiers pledge to dedicate themselves to study for the next three years and forsake all women... of course a bevy of beauties immediately emerge to challenge that notion. The play is typical Shakespeare -- word play, messages misdelivered, disguises and people switching places. I'm sure a lot of the puns were lost on me, but I still enjoyed the ones I got.

While this definitely isn't one of Shakespeare's best, I did find it fun overall. ( )

Another example of Shakespeare's comic fascination with the battle between and misunderstanding of the sexes, Love's Labour's Lost is a difficult play to read, but one which is extremely effective on stage. The Play opens with King Ferdinand of Navarre and his courtiers taking a vow of study and sexual abstinence for a period of three years. However, their vows are soon placed under strain with the arrival of the Princess of France and her ladies in waiting. The inevitable happens, and the different couples attempt to surreptitiously communicate, causing much hilarious confusion and embarrassment in the process. Shakespeare deploys every farcical element in the book, including impersonation, wrongly delivered letters, outrageous puns and word play, fights, drunkenness and masquerades, as Ferdinand's entourage soon learn that rather than running from women to books, it is in fact the opposite sex that "are the books, the arts, the academes/That show, contain, and nourish all the world". However, one of the most interesting aspects of the play is that it does not end with everyone marrying and living happily ever after. The women give as good as they get from the men, and in the end turn the tables in extremely interesting ways. One of Shakespeare's most linguistically challenging, but also intelligent comedies. --Jerry Brotton rrAn early romantic comedy of mistaken identities and word play, Love's Labours Lost is a delight to watch performed. The Arden third series offers a distinctive interpretation of this previously neglected play, in particular its innovative linguistic patterning. The story revolves around the king of Navarre and his courtiers, who decide to devote themselves to three years of study and denial of the opposite sex, but reluctantly fall in love with the Princess of France and her three ladies in waiting. From here, the tangles and cross-purposes begin and the men decide to devote themselves to the study of love. Although dense with sophisticated literary techniques, the play is a wonderful satire of romance and aristocratic pretensions. This edition of Loves Labour's Lost is suitable for both drama and literature students of Shakespeare, as it is a practical guide to staging the play, but also an insightful critique into the play's meaning and history. --Simon Priestly